Overview

pStarz  Play is a subscription video on demand (SVOD) service that streams thousands of blockbuster Hollywood movies, TV shows, documentaries, kids’ entertainment, and same-day- as-the-US series – plus dedicated Arabic and Bollywood content – to 19 countries across the Middle East and North Africa. /p

Supernova Award Category

Tech Optimization and Modernization

The Problem

pStarz Play Arabia streams thousands of movies, documentaries, and television programs to customers in the Middle East, North Africa, and Pakistan. The company needed a scalable billing solution capable of handling complex, high-volume subscriptions. Starz Play offers a range of usage-based payment methods, which has resulted in increased customer adoption and satisfaction. In the Middle East, the majority of consumers want to pay for streaming entertainment services as part of their mobile phone bill, so Starz Play has to work with telecom companies, including support for complex billing and unique subscription management rules, and the ability to accommodate last-minute carrier handling charges and change requests. Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) is highly complex from an operations perspective and relies heavily upon post development and implementation support to succeed. Significant challenges arise when subscription management rules begin to affect businesses midstream when new business rules are introduced. Managed and unmanaged telecom rules behave differently for revenue recognition due to grace periods and activation/deactivation updates not posting correctly to back office systems. The ongoing challenge was to give Starz Play customers get an optimal experience, choosing daily, weekly, or monthly subscriptions billed through their mobile carrier or their credit card, without disrupting revenue or telecom carriers’ business rules./p

The Solution

pBy managing carrier partner billing through the Gotransverse intelligent billing system, Starz Play’s operations team has been able to develop an adaptable billing system that can accommodate business rules for different carriers while delivering accurate, timely charges to customers. With support from Gotransverse, the Starz Play Connect service includes a payment-retry engine, utilizing periodic batches based upon client defined variables. This includes supporting ‘step-down’ charging and variable charge amounts, which are eligible for managed and unmanaged payment methods. These charging methods can optionally run in parallel for all payment methods that support retries – and supports more than 5 billion transactions per month. In addition, the billing system can handle last-minute carrier change requests, adjusting charges for data loss or outages, and regularly reconciling internal and external system values to keep business rules and billing aligned. /p

The results

pBacked by a team of both in-house experts and Gotransverse, the Starz Play Connect platform serves a thriving business now streaming thousands of hours of content and collectively integrating with 19 Middle Eastern countries, 25 carriers for DCB and numerous content bundles. The platform’s rapidly deployed services are hosted on a highly available and distributed infrastructure using a mixture of public and private cloud environments. The monetization suite of services coming from Gotransverse are augmented through Starz Play Connect that are available on local networks residing inside Internet Exchange points regionally to best serve subscribers. /p

Metrics

ul liMillions of customers (3.2 + 0.6 = 3.8 million total on 2 bill cycles right now for Starz)/li liPartner with Telecom = offering many different payment options helped increase customer base/li liMillions of API calls supporting real-time customer interaction self service / self management/li /ul

The Technology

ul liScalable, modern technology/li liBest of breed video delivery solution/li liInternal applications, Mulesoft ESB to Gotransverse/li liAll cloud / SaaS based enables scale options that are financially viable/li liNetsuite as ERP/li /ul

Disruptive Factor

ul liPartner with the telecom operators in each country as they represent an already trusted party to the end customer and enable an easy payment method ul liTechnology difficult as each operator has a different billing platform however Starz mastered them all/li liThese partnerships drastically increase the customer base with every country, every operator and works very well in the region/li /ul /li /ul

Shining Moment

pGrowth from greenfield to millions in two years./p